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Tuesday, July 10, 2012

After The SSA Conference

I went to Columbus, OH for the Secular Student Alliance Conference this
weekend. I attended awesome, informative, and inspiring talks about all
different subjects like mental health, how to use social media
effectively to promote AHA, unsafe assumptions, and especially where
this movement is going.

I came home to my boyfriend's apartment feeling excited and hopeful for
the future. As soon as I got there, I started talking about the
conference. And when I started talking about it, his roommate started
questioning everything about it. "What do you do at the conferences?
Why do you even need them? If you all get together and meet, it's just
like a religion." My excitement was definitely slightly dashed.

It was an immediate reminder that I was no longer in the safety of the
atheist community surrounded by my peers, but thrust back into reality
where people who aren't atheist, humanist, agnostic, etc. don't
understand what we're trying to do. It's not yet totally accepted to be
an open atheist. Families shun children, students get death threats.
Being an out of the closet atheist can be hurtful and damaging to
relationships, jobs, social connections. That's what this movement is
about. We're trying to show we're not satan worshiping baby eaters. We
have morals. We're good people. We give to charities, we help with
natural disasters, we fight as soldiers.

We've changed the world's view of us, but not enough. We've formed a
community to finish this change. We've joined together so that we're
no longer seen as atheists, but as Sydnie or Joe or Ben or Sarah.

We've also joined together and made this strong community for a bigger
and better reason: to be a safety net for new non-theists.
Transitioning out of religion is tough. I've told my story in a different blog post.
And there are tons of other people with similar stories. Leaving a
religion is leaving an entire life behind. It was how I was raised and I
had to turn my back on that. And I'm so happy I found this community
to fall back on. And now I want to be that for more people.

We're not a community because we want to be like a religion. We're a
community so we can help each other and be a support system for each
other. There's something important to us that binds us together and we
bond over that.